Shradhanjali – the startup celebrating the lives of our ancestors

Shradhanjali.com is India’s 1st online tribute portal, aiming to preserve the lives and histories of our ancestors and departed loved ones.

Ancestral history and storytelling has always been a cherished part of India’s rich culture. On this premise, and seeing a gap in the market, Vivek Vyas and Vimal Popat’s online obituary idea was born. Tribute in Hindi, Shradhanjali is an online portal that lets users create memorial webpages for deceased friends or family members. It allows the community to commemorate their lives and share in their history, something that a temporary obituary in a newspaper is unable to do.

Vivek and Popat are entrepreneurs from Rajkot, Gujarat, and the main aim of their site was to preserve the memory of ancestors. They believed that standard black and white newspaper obituaries, crammed together on one page, lacked the respect and personality that these departed loved ones deserved. “Can’t these [obituaries] be presented in some more respectable and presentable manner which also stays forever and can be accessed globally and be remembered and shared?” said Vivek.

Keeping it user-friendly and simple, Shradhanjali.com has features where you can upload, store, publish and share a written biography, videos, photos, and set anniversary reminders. People from across the world can add to the profiles by posting their condolences and own memories of that person in over 24 languages, including 10 Indian dialects. The current trend on the online platform is creating family trees. By uploading photos and text, users of the site can retrace their family ancestry and connect with new or displaced kin.

Given the increasing internet penetration in the country, Vivek and Popat have been expanding and adding e-commerce to the site.

“The obits platform would have e-commerce inbuilt that will allow users to order flowers, condolence cards, sweets and other obit-related products that can be delivered to the grieving family members. Moreover, people are now taking the decision in favor of online obits over traditional newspaper obits,” said Vivek.

Users can now also share their condolences on the website through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Growing in popularity every year, Shradhanjali is an example of how, thanks to the increasing availability of the internet throughout India, startups are turning to online tools and platforms to create businesses in unexpected places.

Tapping into the death care industry, a very shy topic in the startup scene, these two entrepreneurs have created a successful interactive site and encouraged its contributors to celebrate the lives of passed individuals.